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Art in Times of Tragedy with Skylark Vocal Ensemble

The members of Skylark pose in front of a dark grey background wearing varying shades of purple and black.
Michael Justin Studios
/
Skylarkensemble.org
Skylark Vocal Ensemble with Artistic Director Matthew Guard in the center of the back row.

Matthew Guard, Artistic Director of the Boston-based vocal ensemble Skylark, believes that “great art is often the product of great difficulty and tribulation.” It was this belief that became the idea for Clear Voices in the Dark a decade ago, on the eve of the 150th and 70th anniversaries of the Civil War and World War II, respectively. The recording that resulted is an otherworldly combination of Civil War-era folk songs, interspersed between the movements of Francis Poulenc’s Figure Humaine.

Composed in secret during the Nazi occupation of France, Figure Humaine is a notoriously difficult but ultimately rewarding work for unaccompanied choir. Poulenc himself called the cantata an “act of faith,” which requires immense skill and endurance on the part of the performers. Skylark has both in abundance.

The ensemble holds nothing back here, oscillating between hope and despair, violence and tenderness. Clear Voices in the Dark covers the full scope of what it means to be human in times of great tragedy. When I spoke with Matthew Guard, he gave me some insight into the ideas behind this unique program and the ways that interacting with it has changed him over the last decade.

Listen to the interview — along with excerpts from the album — by clicking the player above, and read the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT:

[SINGING] 

Edyn-Mae Stevenson I'm Edyn-Mae Stevenson from WCRB and I'm here with Matthew Guard, who is the Artistic Director of Skylark Vocal Ensemble. Matthew, thank you so much for being here today.

Matthew Guard My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson I'm very excited to talk to you about this album. In the liner notes, you said that you came up with the idea for "Clear Voices in the Dark" way back in 2014. So how did that idea come up for you?

Matthew Guard Yeah, that's right. That's a good question. It was driven really by a desire to engage with this piece by Poulenc called Figure Humaine, which is just a monumental piece of music. It's really important because it was written during World War II, in 1943, in occupied France, and also notable because it's extremely difficult. It's like the Mount Everest for choir. It has two choirs and six parts each. And it's just one of the most difficult things ever written.

But the challenge is it's only about twenty minutes long. And that presents real challenges as a performing ensemble because not many concerts are twenty minutes long, but not many pieces take as much rehearsal to get polished up as Figure Humaine. So, it's a real challenge to figure out, if you want to perform this piece, how in the world you do it in a way that makes the concert worthwhile for the audience, but the process of presenting it possible for the performers. And so, I was on the lookout for some kind of idea to pair something with this piece in a way that would be both artistically fulfilling and also not too mentally or vocally taxing. And we were at that point approaching the anniversary of the civil wars. And I thought, gosh, wouldn't it be cool to have music from the American Civil War era to pair with this, to have two vignettes from war, from two time periods? And I thought, gosh, that could be simpler music to sing. Maybe that's the answer. So that was the seed of the idea.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae Stevenson So here we are a decade later. Why record it now?

Matthew Guard Well, we performed this for the first time in 2015, and it actually was probably the first concert where I fully realized what my job was as Artistic Director of a group like Skylark. It was relatively early on in the group. The group was founded around 2011, 2012, and I was frankly figuring out how to lead a group of professional artists. And I had the incorrect thought that my job was to coach them into singing better, because that's the idea of a choir director that you encounter when you're growing up or in college. But that's actually not the job at all of artistic director for a professional group. The job is to facilitate their working together in effective way and to choose programs that are interesting enough for them to want to really engage and give their best. And this program taught me that lesson very clearly.

We performed it that year. We came back to the program a couple of years later, and we did a tour where we went to New York and performed at the French Institute Alliance Française and to D.C. and performed the piece at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which was Abraham Lincoln's parish in Washington. And I always thought we wanted to record this, but it's really terrifying to sing this piece. And the idea of reaching a standard that is good enough to record for eternity versus good enough to sing in a concert is very different. And so, we kind of kept putting it off. And after about ten years of recording—we've now done ten or eleven albums—it felt like we were at the point now where perhaps we can do this justice, and we know how to do this. And also, just given the events happening in the world right now, it seemed like a really appropriate time to record a piece about times of war. We recorded this piece last summer, so it was before the current turmoil in the Middle East. But it was after the start of the war in Ukraine.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson I think it's very interesting listening to the album that Poulenc sort of shares some of our own modern apocalyptic anxieties.

Matthew Guard Absolutely. And so does the poetry. I mean, he's just channeling the poetry of Paul Éluard, who is this French surrealist poet whose imagery is just totally off the wall. And you're right, sometimes it's... Actually, it goes back and forth. It's like two sides of the same brain. Sometimes it's very sweet and simple and frivolous. And then it goes into just absolutely terrifying.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae Stevenson The pairing of this Poulenc piece, the Figure Humaine, with the Civil War era folk music... It works really well, but I think these two events, World War II and the Civil War, are very separate in most people's minds. So, I'm kind of wondering how you made that connection.

Matthew Guard The connection that I was thinking about is more around the human reaction to times of violence and strife, and how during both these time periods, which, yes, were very different in many ways, there still were human beings who were living through really difficult times. And a reaction from some is to create art, to cope through music and to try to lift humanity out of the depths through something beautiful. And to me, that's the thread that holds these two sides of this program together.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson The word that comes to mind for me with this Poulenc piece but also with this album is duality. The sort of light and dark and hope and despair and war and peace. Also, more practically, this cantata by Poulenc has two choirs.

Matthew Guard Absolutely.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson Could you maybe explain what role both of the choirs play in that piece and what kind of effect that has on the listening experience?

Matthew Guard Absolutely, yeah. It's very clearly written for two distinct group of voices, and a lot of the music is back and forth between the two sides of the choir. And they'll be as short as one measure or two measures of music, very short phrases firing back and forth. Sometimes it literally is firing back and forth, and I feel pretty confident that what's happening is each choir is shooting musical bullets at the other. Other times it is the expression of someone who's going through pangs of anxiety or grief or worry or hope, and each phrase takes a different emotional tack. And I think that's really a reflection of the poetry that underpins the piece. The poetry... It's beautiful. It's very characteristic of that surrealist period. And it has these just images. It's almost like you shake a snow globe and then a different image comes up every twenty or thirty seconds, and that's what the choirs are doing as we're exploring these different ideas.

I feel like there is a little bit of a typecasting where you have choir one, which is a little bit higher in tessitura, being a little bit more optimistic and perhaps sometimes sharing more of the positive hopeful thoughts, where choir two is a little bit more brooding. But then sometimes that reverses. So, it's not totally clear, but that makes it really exciting to watch because you have this back and forth and only at a very few times in the piece does the entire choir come together to sing something in complete homophony across all twelve voices. And those are times of really profound textural importance for the piece.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson How does that come across in the recording, do you think?

Matthew Guard That's a good question. We certainly had the choir arranged in the way we perform it. And so, if you are listening to the recording in an environment where you can clearly perceive the stereo image, so if you're wearing headphones or if you're with a nice set of speakers, you will hear the first choir coming through your right ear and choir two to coming through your left ear. And you can definitely hear that audio image as you listen to it. And I think it does make it really, brutally obvious when everyone's singing at the same time. So, one of the really impactful moments is the end of the seventh movement, and it just feels like the choir almost lifts off the ground. They're so together and frankly loud to have them all singing the same thing at the same time.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae Stevenson You made a very creative choice to not perform the "Figure Humaine" all the way through, but to break up each movement with these Civil War songs. And I was wondering what the intention behind that was as well. Was it, you know, more of a practical choice or was there more of a creative decision behind that?

Matthew Guard I'd say it's a bit of both. There's definitely is a practical bit. It's very mentally taxing to sing the Poulenc. You have people who are fully professional vocal artists, some of whom have been singing professionally for decades, who bought their first tuning fork because of this piece, in our group. So, it's just it's very difficult. The intervals are not at all obvious. And there's lots of times where you have to kind of, because of this back and forth between the choirs, it's almost like jumping onto a moving train to find your note for your next phrase. And so, I thought that there was an important piece that might emerge, if you broke it up a bit. You might get more focus and success as opposed to doing all twenty minutes at once.

Now, you could argue that's against the composer’s intent, and that certainly is a valid argument. I think that's why another justification is needed, which is I feel like for the listener, this is a pretty difficult piece to listen to. Now, if you're really an aficionado of the early 20th century classical music and you love Poulenc, it's not that. But for the average person walking in off the street, this is a pretty challenging piece to listen to. It's so wild that I think you can lose some people who otherwise might be moved by it if you give it to them all at once. People can zone out and say, "I just don't get this" because it is pretty obtuse, in a way. And so, the thought was, if you can deliver the Poulenc in smaller increments and then give the listener and the audience some aural relief, something a little bit simpler that they can understand, that can help them—and especially if the simple and understandable thing has a direct connection to what they're hearing in the Poulenc. And so that was a really intentional choice.

There's a piece from the Civil War after each movement of the Poulenc, but that was a long process to figure out what exactly should go into those spots. And I was very clear to try not to break the harmonic progression. The Poulenc has a very specific use of key. I have no doubt that different keys have different meanings. I think E major is redemption and liberty, and E-flat minor is darkness and despair. And so, it's important to put these Civil War songs in the harmonic environment in a way that doesn't break up the vibe from a harmonic perspective. But then also, I chose pieces where the text of the Civil War song has a direct connection to what just happened in the Éluard text in French. And so, for example, the second movement of the poem has this really gruesome battlefield scene where it talks about these young women running across the battlefield, cleaning up the scene after this horrific battle. And after that, we have a song from the American Civil War, which is a really beautiful, simple parlor song called "Break It Gently to My Mother," which was inspired by a scene on the battlefield after the Battle of Gettysburg. We try to, for each of the movements, create that connection. So even though it does break up the Poulenc in terms of its harmonic listening environment for the complexity, it still has the throughline of both overall harmonic structure and textural intent.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae Stevenson I was going to say, you do this very clever thing where you can feel the progression of a story throughout the whole album. There's a moment there where it gets very dark in both the Civil War era pieces and then also the Poulenc. And then you included one of my favorite hymns which you say is one of your favorite hymns as well: "Abide with Me." And I think it came at the perfect moment where it was almost this uplifting, this relief. And then you can see that things start to get a little more hopeful, a little more victorious. I think that was really, really well done.

Matthew Guard I'm so glad that that spoke to you. I think there's rarely a bad time to sing "Abide with Me." But it does feel like that particular moment, the sixth movement of the Poulenc, is a choir two solo, just half the choir singing this song. And basically, it's only a minute long. It's very spare, and it's about this image of wandering in the woods and this beast or this wolf following you. And that's the analogy for that moment in history. To me, it seemed like a time to understand that what you need at that moment is a simple breath of hope or a prayer or something.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson And to that effect, something that is very striking to me while listening to this is that obviously it's very much an album that is about war. But even with a very hopeful and even triumphant ending with the "Liberté," it never, ever celebrates or glorifies war at any point. How did you toe that line?

Matthew Guard I think that it's a musical choice thing, right? I guess the Poulenc is undisputedly an anti-war piece, and the poetry is all very much from that bend. So, there was no choice there. For the Civil War songs, it was more about trying to explore pieces that express what humans are feeling during those times. And none of these are marching songs, songs to bring people into battle. I guess the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" can sometimes be viewed or thought of in that way. But when you actually read the text and you think about why that was written and what that was expressing at the time, it's not glorifying what has to be done to make things right. It's just saying that things have to be right.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson I noticed as well, you chose a different version of what we know here in the U.S. as "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

Matthew Guard That's right. That's one of the more familiar Civil War melodies for those of us who grew up watching the Ken Burns Civil War series. That's a very familiar tune. But you're right, there is an interesting story beyond that, behind that tune. It actually, I think maybe originated as a folk song somewhere in the British Isles? And it came to the U.S. and became "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and then it went back to Ireland and became a war song called "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye," which is actually very much a gruesome anti-war statement as opposed to a heroic marching song. And the arrangement for that that we used was done by Alice Parker for the Robert Shaw Chorale during the Vietnam War. And the conductor, Robert Shaw, was very much a pacifist, an anti-war thinker and person. And I have no doubt that that's what that arrangement was composed for during that time period. And it's a really striking, kind of horrifying arrangement. I think it's one of the only American Civil War song that we did that has this really kind of gruesome side to it.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae Stevenson I want to get a little more personal for a moment. It was very emotional, like very heavy for me while preparing for this interview. And that was just, you know, for an afternoon. I genuinely do not believe that this is a work of art, this Poulenc is a work of art that you can just walk away from unscathed. And I was thinking, how was this for you and for the ensemble to inhabit this headspace through the rehearsal and recording process and just like performing it over the last decade?

Matthew Guard That's a great question and you're totally right. It sticks with you. I think there's several sides to it. One side is just... It's almost impossible to engage with the heaviness of it because it's so difficult. The first time we tackled this piece, it was just euphoria from actually having finished it, not even thinking about what it means. In fact, one of our—and this is a pretty monumental thing even for our artists to do. There are people in our ensemble who, like I said, are career performing artists, who this is one of their career mountaintops. And they talk about this piece and performing this piece as one of the top couple of things that they've done, and they keep their score and it's a really meaningful thing. The very first time we performed it, one of my colleagues had written two post-concert congratulation cards, one of which was a really victorious image of like, the Arc de Triomphe, and one was a bicycle wreck in the Tour de France. And they go, "Which one is it going to be?" because it's so hard. So that was the first time.

And then we came back to it several years later and we took it to places that were very meaningful. And I think that's when it started to be an emotional experience based on what it meant. I mean, singing the Civil War songs in front of Abraham Lincoln's pew was something that was very profound. But still, we never really got, if I'm honest... It's twenty minutes of music. We never got it all right. Luckily, it's so difficult that no one in the audience, unless they're really an expert, would know. But we knew. And so that still kind of stops you from having a full emotional experience of it. So, this last time was different in that we had some people who had done every performance of it with us and a few folks who were new to it. But we had a process where we rehearsed for, I think, three or four days, then performed two concerts, then we recorded for four days. We performed two more concerts. And the last concert was in the venue that we recorded, which is the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill. And that last concert was out of this world because we had literally spent deep, detailed time with every single measure. And frankly, some of the recording was done a measure at a time because there's no other way to do it to get it right. It's almost impossible to get it just right without a magnifying glass in every moment. And so, to come back to the arc of the whole piece after having gone into every single detail, there were a lot of tears from our artists after that performance. And that doesn't happen a lot in professional music because people kind of become immune to being moved by things. That's not the case at all with this.

Edyn-Mae Stevenson What is different now for you from ten years ago when you first started performing this piece? Like, how has this piece changed you?

Matthew Guard I think I engage with it very differently because I feel somewhat more confident in my ability to bring something to it, where originally I was just, "Oh my gosh, I wonder if we can do this" and not, "Can I bring something special to it?" And so, I think I never really engaged with a degree of freedom and confidence to just like, let go and allow emotions to flow. I definitely feel like this is a piece now where I have no inhibition about living in whatever the emotion is at that moment. And it's really freeing to take something so difficult, having gone through this science part, to actually have the freedom to do the art and the emotional side. That's one of the challenging things about music, is that so much of really high-level music performance is actually a science and it's technical, and you just can't move people without mastering all of the details. And that can sometimes allow you not to be moved yourself because you're so focused on delivering the experience for the listener. And I think at this point now, on this piece, I actually have the ability and the freedom to be moved by it. And the recording sessions... It was definitely a top two or three musical experience of my life so far. Just hearing these things, even going phrase by phrase, measure by measure, doing the final chords of "Liberté" four or five times was totally mind-blowing.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae Stevenson Matthew, you have been so generous with your time. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful talking to you.

Matthew Guard Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for engaging in the conversation and helping people learn about this piece and this recording. It means a lot.

[SINGING]

Edyn-Mae is a producer and host at CRB.